I'm Chris and I am addicted to yard sales, garage sales, thrift stores and bargain hunting in general. Visit my site yardsalequeen.com - which I started in 1996.
"Smile" and "VV" (Vintage Value) are the names of two thrift stores I regularly shop at.
I grew up in Clifton Park NY but now live in Lusby, MD. I also lived in other exciting locales such as Schenectady, Watervliet (NY), and Charleston, SC.

Friday, September 14, 2007

Update for last two weeks

Sorry I've been neglecting the blog. I should start writing a little every day just to make it a habit. In the past couple of weeks: I did a "highway yardsale", went to yardsales, shopped at my thrift, did some Staples shopping and BJ's Warehouse shopping. I stopped at BJ's to see when my free 60-day membership expired - the free membership I wrote about here a little while back. I remembered that I never posted a pic of my wonderful pic on the BJ's ID card, so here it is. I have not edited the pic at all, that's how it appears. As it turns out the membership is good until the end of September, which I think is longer than 60 days. I may join on October 1st, I got a notice that my son's school is doing a fundraiser, join for $35 and get 15 months and the school gets a kick-back.

And as I was walking out BJ's I passed one of the lottery scratch off machines and saw a lottery card sitting there in the slot. (Maryland has some self-serve scratch-off lottery machines - you put in your money and you choose what type of scratch off you want). Anyhow no one was around, so I took it. I won $3. (And someone actually paid $3 for it and left it there - or maybe they were doing a random act of kindness, who knows.)

At Staples, I bought Jacob a nice backpack for school. Price: $39.99, sale price $29.99 - $20 rebate brings it down to $9.99. I used three $3 inkjet cartridge coupons to pay for it. So after the rebates, the cost will have been $2.04 (ok, I did spent .75 per $3 coupon ($2.25) so really it will have cost me $4.29. But I will be getting a % back of the $29.99 cost with my Staples Rewards Card. Actually it think I paid .60 per coupon, I can't remember but I know it was cheap. A while back I bought about 200 used inkjet cartridges on ebay - then I just take them to Staples for recycling and get the $3 coupon in exchange.

Last Saturday I did a "highway yardsale" - where people just set up mini-yardsales on the little deadend roads next to the highway. Got rid of some of the toys from the playpen. And last Saturday there were some EARLY yardsales starting, I went to one at 6am! and another started at 7:30. Then by 8am I was set up on the highway. Glad I went to the early yardsales. I bought a very nice almost new panini maker with a Williams & Sonoma panini cookbook for $5, a big McCoy bowl for $4, a trumpet for $10 and a bunch of cds for .25 each. I didn't notice the trumpet had a big dent in it, I sold it that very same day for $15 at my own yardsales and many of the CDs sold for $1 each.

Oh and I wanted to share these pics - when I was at the 6am indoor yardsale at a community center, I could see the sunrise so after I left, I drove to the beach and took these pics.

Yardsalequeen.com

I have a wide variety of interests: going to yard sales, garage sales, thrift stores, estate sales and rummage sales. After I had my son Jacob in 2000, I quit my job at a nuclear power plant after almost 10 years. Now I just sit home, eat bonbons and watch Ellen while I plan my strategy to hit next week's yardsales. Laugh. Dance. Yardsale.